Sentry [Fighter Archetype]

[Bucky]

Sentries are fighters who specialize in protecting places. Rather than roaming the countryside looking for trouble, they stay near where they know the trouble will be.

Skills:
Knowledge(Local) (Int), Perception (Wis) and Sense Motive (Wis) are class skills for a Sentry, replacing Handle Animal, Knowledge(Dungeoneering) and Ride.

Uncanny Perception:
An experienced Sentry develops an instinctive sense for when someone tries to sneak past her. At 8th level, she gains Blindsense out to 30'. At 16th level, she gains Blindsight out to 60'. These abilities replaces the fighter's 8th and 16th level bonus feats.

------
Looking for feedback. The archetype is inspired by some forum comments that NPC fighters are the default choice for lookouts/sentries despite having a terrible skill list for it. And once they're dedicated to detecting sneaks, they need some way to deal with invisibility.

However, this seems to be too simple for an archetype. Most of the existing Fighter archetypes swap out Bravery. Is this necessary?

[Ilorin Lorati]

Nothing is really necessary when dealing with archetypes, except a few limitations (not changing bab or HD size, mainly). If you really want to have bravery replace something, I'd go with giving a bonus to defense against intimidate, perception to notice stealth, and sense motive to notice lying.

An alternative recommendation would be to give them a couple extra skill ranks per level, replacing the second level bonus feat since their number of skill ranks still don't match up well with the plethora of skills that sentries and gate guards would actually use.

[Bucky]

An alternative recommendation would be to give them a couple extra skill ranks per level, replacing the second level bonus feat since their number of skill ranks still don't match up well with the plethora of skills that sentries and gate guards would actually use.

One of the other rules seems to be that no replacement feature can take effect before whatever it replaced. So extra skill ranks at level 1 in exchange for the level 2 bonus feat or Bravery is a no-go.

On the other hand, how many skill ranks per level do you think a Sentry needs?

[Ilorin Lorati]

That's a rule I don't put too much stock into, since there's places where the character ostensibly gains a feature without anything directly traded away, but 2nd or first doesn't really matter too much. 2 bonus ranks would likely be enough for this, since average it ends up with the (NPC) character being able to have Profession (Guard), Perception, Sense Motive, and one or two others to sum up their character.

[Bucky]

I wouldn't require guards to have Profession(Guard). So they'd be able to get by on just Perception + Sense Motive, plus a racial Human skill.